


Waking Moments

by Rhianne



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, Gen, Gen Fic, Shamanism, warriors - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 20:11:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/422738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhianne/pseuds/Rhianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim and Blair have some issues to work out after the events of Warriors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking Moments

The coffee warmed his hands as he sat in the semi darkness, fingers wrapped tightly around the almost scalding mug. At this time of night Blair wouldn’t normally pick coffee as his drink of choice unless he was still working. Nights at home when he didn’t have to stay up till the early hours grading papers or preparing lesson plans were few and far between, and if this was a normal night off he’d have had a cup of peppermint or camomile tea before falling gratefully into bed, his body greedily craving the precious sleep he could never quite seem to catch up on.

In fact, that’s exactly how this particular night had started, even if today had been nothing even close to normal. The adrenaline rush from spending the last two days chasing the Chopec around Cascade had been extreme in its intensity, and the comedown just as brutal. 

They’d been standing together in the street, trying to work out exactly how the Chopec had disappeared into thin air. Blair could practically feel his own face pale as the energy flowed out of him, and he’d felt an overwhelming need to sit down before he fell as a patrol car came screaming round the corner, a familiar saloon turning wildly behind it that Blair immediately recognised as Simon’s.

As the sirens screamed around them Blair glanced automatically over to Jim, checking that the loud noise wasn’t bothering his sense of hearing. They were around sirens so often that Jim had become almost immune to the sound, and under normal circumstances Blair wouldn’t even have worried about it, but things weren’t exactly normal. It had only been a couple of hours since Jim had regained his Sentinel abilities, and Blair wouldn’t be surprised if for the next few days his senses were harder to control than usual. The lines around Jim’s eyes told Blair that he probably had a bad headache but was still standing, moving around a little stiffly perhaps, but there was nothing more in Jim’s expression that gave Blair cause for immediate concern. They both needed rest, and some time to adjust to what had happened, that was all.

Blair could see that the Sentinel was just as exhausted as he was, and after a short discussion with the Captain and a quick check on Yeagar and his men in case they had any plans to make a run for it, both men had lowered themselves wearily to the sidewalk and allowed Simon to take over for a while.

Running a hand through his hair, Blair had been dismayed to see the dried blood on his forearm, the streaks vaguely handprint shaped from where Incacha had grabbed him.

Shaman of the Great City.

Blair shivered suddenly, using his other hand to rub at the flakes of blood, trying to remove the evidence before Jim could notice. Neither man needed any more reminders of just what this entire mess had cost them. All Blair had to do was close his eyes and it was right there in front of him – his own horror at finding Janet’s body when she’d only been trying to help; Incacha’s final moments at the loft; the wild-eyed, uncontrolled fury in Jim’s face as he’d screamed at the paramedics. In all their years together, Blair had never seen Jim behave like that before – so primal and irrational, his usually rigid control shattered into a thousand pieces.

He wasn’t ashamed to admit that it had shaken him.

He couldn’t seem to get rid of the blood, and in the end Blair had resorted to simply pulling down the cuffs of his shirt, hoping that he could at least mask them from Jim’s sight until this was all over and he could get clean, in body if not in spirit. He glanced over at Jim, and frowned slightly when he realised that his friend was watching him, had probably already seen his efforts to rid himself of Incacha’s blood. So much for his own poor attempts to protect the Sentinel.

He just hoped that they could get all this over with soon, and not have to return to the station to file all the paperwork until at least tomorrow. Blair wasn’t sure how much longer he was going to be able to carry on a sensible conversation with anyone, without falling asleep mid-sentence.

So it was ironic that now, hours later, when all the initial reports had been filed and the rest deferred until at least tomorrow afternoon, Blair was simply unable to sleep. He was still just as exhausted as he had been, his body so tired that filling the kettle had taken all of his remaining concentration, but his mind simply refused to shut down. 

The last forty-eight hours were whirling round and round in his head, a cacophony of memories and fears that he couldn’t stop. He’d been lying in bed for hours, staring up at the ceiling and wishing that he’d fall asleep, hoping that if he could just recharge his batteries a little then he’d be able to think things through properly, but it hadn’t happened and finally he’d given in, dragging himself out of bed and into the kitchen for a warm drink.

The reappearance of the Chopec had dragged so many things back out into the open that Blair simply hadn’t wanted to face. Jim had rejected his senses yet again, and the damn dissertation had hovered over them like the sword of Damocles. The slightest mention of it lately had caused Jim’s hackles to rise, and if Blair hadn’t already known the truth, and known it for months, this would have proved once and for all that Jim was afraid - afraid of the dissertation, of what it would say, what it meant, and he’d obviously not yet fully come to terms with his senses, not deep down, if his instincts were still to run from them whenever things got difficult.

For all their joking around, for all that Jim had agreed to the paper being written about him, he’d never been comfortable with it. 

Blair had honestly thought they’d dealt with this a year ago, when they’d both gone to Peru to rescue Simon and Daryl. Jim had gone into the jungle distracted, fractured somehow, but even though Jim had always refused to talk about it, something had changed while they were searching. He’d returned to Cascade focused, driven, with an incredible degree of control over his senses that Blair had never seen before, and he’d thought that they were finally past this complete, instinctual rejection of everything Jim was.

Unfortunately, in rejecting his senses Jim was also rejecting Blair, who was self-aware enough to know that when he’d asked Jim if Simon would want their partnership to continue without the justification of the sentinel thing, he was actually looking for reassurance from Jim himself that he wanted Blair around for more than just his help, that their friendship transcended the mutual need that had originally brought them together.

Jim’s immediate assumption that Blair was only concerned because of his dissertation had done nothing to ease his fears. 

Of course, once Jim’s senses returned and the race was on to find the Chopec they’d not mentioned it again, ignoring the whole conversation as if it had never happened, just like always.

He’d actually been relieved at first, needing time to work through Jim’s words, to figure out what they meant and how he felt about them without having to articulate his feelings. He knew all too well that if he started trying to explain something to Jim before he fully understood it himself then it would only end in an argument. When Jim was in that kind of mood only a rational, logical, well-structured argument could get him to listen. In that respect, he would have made a great university Professor.

Then they’d found Janet’s body in the parking garage, and Incacha had bled to death on their sofa…

The memory made him glance over at the remains of the sofa, shuddering as he took in the missing cushions, and the dark stain on the floor where the cleaning crew had wiped away every trace of blood, leaving only water-logged fibres that seemed to be taking forever to dry. Blair wondered if they would always remain wet as a testament to the life that was lost, that perhaps the passing of a shaman, with all his powers, left some kind of imprint on the physical world as a mark of lasting respect. 

He had to smother a tired chuckle then at the fanciful turn of his thoughts, a sign of just how tired he really was. Any minute now he’d probably start to see pixies dancing round the TV stand.

But Incacha had been a trained shaman all his life, with all the spiritual knowledge that such a privileged position within a Chopec tribe demanded. Blair was just a grad student, his knowledge of shamans being limited to what little he’d picked up in classes dealing with ancient folklore and a few of the more interesting expeditions. He wasn’t a shaman, and didn’t have the first clue what it would really mean to be one.

They’d proved that much tonight. He’d been trying to get Jim to reconnect with his senses for days, becoming more and more frustrated as Jim refused to listen, cutting him off at every turn. Incacha had simply told him, once, what he needed to do and Jim had obeyed, sentinel to shaman. While Blair was well aware that at least part of that obedience was because it had, essentially, been Incacha’s dying wish, he still couldn’t ignore the knowledge that he didn’t have the control with Jim that the shaman had.

He wasn’t even sure that he wanted that responsibility. The dissertation was already causing enough of a rift between them, and now that he’d admitted he already had enough material to write ten, that the end was finally in sight, Blair was convinced that Jim would be even more wary, waiting for the day that the thesis was finished and the nature of their friendship changed all over again.

Behind all of that, somewhere in the back of his mind Blair could still hear Jim’s earlier comment about his dissertation, and with it came the fear that he’d perhaps somehow misjudged Jim’s opinion of their friendship, that for him it might still be all about putting up with the dissertation for the sake of regaining his control, that the ‘friendship’ that Blair depended on was perhaps something that Jim merely put up with.

How would Jim react now that Blair had been named his shaman? 

Blair didn’t know what this new role in his life would entail, and whether he even had a choice over whether to accept it. Whether Jim would be prepared for him to accept it.

There were too many questions, and Blair knew he didn’t have anything like the information he needed to try and answer them, and so found his thoughts wandering to the collection of books and journals scattered haphazardly across his room. Could there be anything about shamans in them? He’d always been interested in the mystic side of life, partly the influence of his mother, and especially since Jim had admitted seeing his spirit guide deep in the jungles of Peru.

He stood, hauling himself wearily up from the hard seat at the table and heading back towards his room. A little research would help calm his thoughts and finally allow him to sleep, and if he was really lucky, he might just find some of the answers he so desperately needed.

A soft noise echoed loudly through the quiet loft, and Blair froze halfway across the room, trying to work out what had caught his attention. 

The loft was full of shadows, the moonlight coming in through the windows only half managing to fight back the darkness around him and Blair had to consciously fight down the irrational fear that enveloped him at the thought of having to look in the direction of the sofa, images of Incacha’s corpse staring sightlessly up at Jim again forcing themselves to the forefront of his mind.

Then he heard it again, a rustling sound that came from somewhere to his left – thankfully in the wrong direction to be anywhere near the sofa. A soft moan followed, and as Blair took a step towards the stairs and Jim’s bedroom, he suddenly realised what he was hearing.

Jim was having a nightmare.

He moved quickly, hoping that the sound of the floorboards creaking beneath his feet as he began to climb the stairs would be enough to jog the sentinel out of his dream.

Jim was usually a light sleeper, thanks both to his senses and years of special ops training, but as Blair got halfway up the stairs and could see his friend, it was obvious that was not the case tonight. Jim wasn’t wearing his eyemask, and even in the semi darkness Blair could make out eyes scrunched tightly closed, shoulders hunched over in defence as Jim shied away from whatever mental demons he was facing.

Blair hurried up the last few steps, calling Jim’s name as he did so. He didn’t have much experience of nightmares, at least not from this side of the dream. In contrast to his friend Blair was a heavy sleeper, his body fighting a constant battle to claw back every moment of lost sleep, and while he wasn’t naïve enough to think that Jim never had nightmares, after all the very nature of a police officer’s job and past provided ample fuel to choose from, usually Blair was too deeply asleep to hear them. 

Jim didn’t respond to his name, and as Blair took the final step into the bedroom he could make out Jim muttering to himself; a quiet, strained whispering. It was too soft to make out the words themselves, but Blair heard the emotion in them, a raw, primal grief that told Blair that Jim was dreaming about Incacha as surely as if he had heard the shaman’s name.

Then he did as Jim yelled into the empty loft, silent tears glistening on his cheeks as he twisted on the bed, the duvet beginning to slide towards the floor. Blair’s heart went out to his friend and he quickly crossed the remaining distance between them, leaning over as he reached for Jim’s arm.

“Jim!” he called, noting the chill of the other man’s arm as he tightened his grip, shaking Jim’s shoulder to try and wake him. “Wake up!”

“No!” 

The explosion of movement was too quick for Blair to follow. One minute he was half kneeling at Jim’s side, and the next Jim moved, hurling himself out of bed and taking Blair with him. Blair cried out in surprise as he found himself being propelled across the small room, his feet tangling helplessly in the thin rug on the floor. 

Caught off balance, he would have stumbled if his back hadn’t hit the wall behind him, the solid brick keeping him upright even as it knocked the air out of his lungs. The world spun crazily, and for a moment Blair thought he was going to fall anyway, until a ring of cold steel pressed into his temple, and with a sick sense of dread Blair realised exactly what was happening at the same time as he wondered what the hell Jim was doing sleeping with a gun under his pillow in his own home.

Jim had him pinned against the wall, one arm tight across his throat as the other pushed his gun against Blair’s head. Hands instinctively grasping at the arm that was already beginning to tighten across his airway, Blair fought to drag Jim’s arm away from his throat long enough to take a proper breath. Jim shook him, bouncing the back of Blair’s head off the wall behind him before the arm reappeared at his throat, harder this time, completely cutting off Blair’s air.

Dazed, Blair allowed his hands to fall away from Jim’s arm, what little breath he still had catching in his throat as he looked up at Jim’s face. Jim’s eyes were open, black pools of ice staring down at him, but Jim was looking straight through him, with no sign that he knew where he was or what he was doing.

Desperately trying to think, to come up with a way out of this before the nightmare came to its natural conclusion and Jim simply shot him, Blair raised his hands again, but this time let them lay flat against the wall in a universal gesture of surrender. Even though he was asleep, Blair knew that on some level Jim must be aware of the real world to have known that there was someone by his bed, even if the knowledge that there was no real threat here had been lost in whatever nightmare scenario Jim was playing out. Blair sent up a prayer that his submissive gesture wouldn’t be lost as well, dimly aware of the sound of his harsh breathing echoing around them as he struggled to pull in enough air.

He tried to calm his heartbeat, afraid that the frantic rhythm rushing inside his head would only add to the tension, that the sentinel would hear it and misinterpret it as some kind of threat. But his body was fighting for air, and it was all he could do not to lash out in rising panic as he began to suffocate.

He forced himself to stay absolutely still, to be as unthreatening as possible, unable to tear his eyes away from Jim’s face, which was so absolutely devoid of expression that Blair began to wonder whether Jim was still asleep, or had actually woken up, and promptly zoned. He was still all too aware of the gun pushed against his head, the pressure not letting up for a second even when dark spots began to appear at the edges of his vision. He blinked them away, realising with fear that he had no idea what he was supposed to do now. 

It was dangerous to wake people up if they were sleepwalking, wasn’t it? Something about the sudden awakening proving too much of a shock to the system, and even if that wasn’t true, startling Jim could easily prove to be enough to make him pull the trigger out of reflex. But he couldn’t just stand there. The darkness was rapidly spreading, and Blair knew he didn’t have long before he passed out. He had no doubt that the sudden movement as he collapsed would be enough to make Jim pull the trigger.

“Jim,” he croaked hoarsely, feeling the last of his strength beginning to slip away. “Don’t,” he managed, his voice sounding surprisingly calm even though it was little more than a whisper. The arm at his throat loosened ever so slightly, and Blair managed to drag in a needed lungful of air before the arm tightened again. Hope flaring he tried again, horribly aware that his eyesight was blurring, shadows rushing at him as he began to pass out.

“Jim…please…”

Had he even managed to say the words this time? Or were they just in his head? 

His knees began to buckle, forcing Jim’s arm to take more of his weight and cutting off the last of his air. His vision had narrowed until all he could see were Jim’s eyes, filled with an intense, focused concentration, apparently unaware that he was choking his friend.

“Please…” he whispered, but now he couldn’t even hear his own voice. 

Blair was dimly aware of Jim suddenly blinking, and even as his own eyes began to drift shut he registered a look of horror flashing across Jim’s face. Blair was abruptly released, and with nothing to hold him up he collapsed. 

“What?”

Blair landed hard on his knees, one hand reaching out blindly to stop his fall as the sudden rush of air made him light-headed. The whisper almost went unnoticed as he coughed hoarsely, his body dragging in much needed air as his other hand went automatically to his throat. Jim was staring down at him in shock, obviously still disoriented.

Blair half-fell back against the wall, coughing again as he felt his heartbeat slowly beginning to return to normal. He rested his head wearily against the cold stone. “Jim? You with me?” he asked warily, wincing at the scratchy sound of his voice.

The words were enough to jolt Jim out of his stupor, and he moved quickly over to Blair’s side, crouching down. Blair fought down an instinctive urge to flinch away, knowing it would help no-one if Jim thought Blair was afraid of him. He wasn’t altogether sure that he succeeded.

“Chief…?” he trailed off. Without waiting for an answer, Jim gently lifted Blair’s chin up and to one side, examining the bruising that was already beginning to form across Blair’s throat.

Blair pushed Jim’s arm away, taking a deep breath before replying. “Remind me not to do that again,” he muttered hoarsely. 

Jim ran a hand through his hair, and Blair was concerned to see that it was shaking. “I’m so sorry, I…I don’t know what happened. Are you alright?”

“You were having a nightmare,” he said, coughing once more before climbing unsteadily to his feet. “I tell you man, next time I try to wake you up, I’m using a loudspeaker.” Blair was only half joking. “I came up to wake you. Who did you think I was?” he asked, but then held up a hand before Jim had a chance to answer. “Actually, scratch that. I don’t think I want to know.”

Blair saw a muscle in Jim’s jaw tense, and wondered for a second whether or not he shouldn’t have made that last comment. Was he supposed to be asking about Jim’s dreams now, in case they were visions? Would Jim even accept him asking the question? Exactly how far was he supposed to carry this new role as shaman, anyway? Jim had said that Incacha guided him while he was in Peru, and even in the few hours that Blair had known him, it was obvious that Incacha knew more about the mystical side of this whole Sentinel deal than Blair himself. 

But then Incacha had probably trained to be a shaman all his life, with vision quests and spirit walks to help him. Somehow Blair doubted that yoga meditations would have quite the same effect.

Blair couldn’t imagine that Jim would put up with Blair trying to get even more involved in his life than he already was. He knew how hard Jim found the constant monitoring to cope with – Blair trying to fulfil some kind of shamanic role in Jim’s life would only put Jim even further under the microscope.

He was shaken out of his thoughts when Jim gently took his arm and began steering him down the steps towards the kitchen. Blair allowed himself to relax a little. Jim in mother hen mode – this he understood.

Both men remained silent as they headed over to the kitchen table. He sank gratefully into a chair, more shaken than he wanted to admit by what had happened.

The strange thing was, Blair wasn’t even that surprised. He’d been living with Jim long enough to know that the man was more dangerous than he first appeared, even without knowing the specifics of all the classified covert ops stuff that Jim simply refused to talk about. He’d seen Jim’s defensive, protective instincts surface a thousand times over the years, normally when there was a threat to someone he was close to – Simon, Daryl, Blair himself. 

Jim had lost so many people he cared about, that even the threat of having to add another name to that long, melancholy list was enough to have him lashing out in fear, like a cornered animal defending its own.

Jim would always be a hunter at heart; even while the sentinel senses were dormant he’d chosen a career that could be compared to that of a hunter, with the same single-minded focus on missions that Blair had seen first hand in animals hunting on the Serengeti, or tribesmen in the jungle. And if that was the case, then what was more dangerous than a cornered hunter who suddenly found himself the hunted?

Blair might not know exactly what Jim’s dream had been about, but whatever it was had shaken him, badly, and it was understandable that Jim’s fight or flight response had kicked in when Blair had approached him.

A cup was pressed into his hand, and Blair looked up in surprise to see Jim watching him, concern clearly displayed on his face as he hovered at the side of the table.

“You should drink that while it’s still warm,” Jim said, breaking the silence. “It’ll help ease your throat.”

Nodding mutely, Blair took a sip, the honey and lemon drink soothing his sore throat as he swallowed.

Jim pulled a chair over and sat down with a sigh, and though he didn’t reach out this time, Blair could see Jim’s pupils dilating as he examined the bruising on Blair’s throat in the dim light of the loft.

“I’m alright, Jim,” Blair repeated, another sip of honey and lemon helping him to disguise the hoarse sound of his voice.

“No thanks to me,” Jim muttered darkly, and Blair sighed.

“Jim…” he hesitated, not even sure where to start, watching Jim sadly across the table, and eventually he simply settled for adding: “I’m sorry about Incacha.”

“We’ll have to try and find the rest of the Chopec tomorrow, make sure that they get back to Peru safely,” Jim said quietly, and for a moment, in the faint streetlight that fell in bands across the loft, Blair thought that he could see tears glistening in his friend’s eyes.

Blair wanted to say something, to find words that could comfort Jim, but he knew that anything he said would simply sound trite, just like nothing that Jim said could lessen the pain of knowing that Janet was dead, and that he was at least partially responsible for that loss. So he said nothing, the mug cooling forgotten between Blair’s hands for the second time that night.

Misery surrounded Jim like a cloud, evident in the slump of his shoulders, and the downcast eyes that stared at the floor as they sat in silence. The city itself seemed quiet, respectful, and none of the usual sounds of sirens and cars driving through the night drifted up through the glass windows from the street below. Surprisingly it was Jim who broke the silence, his voice echoing in the quiet of the loft.

“Incacha found me nine days after we crashed in Peru,” he began quietly, staring down at the table as he spoke, refusing to meet Blair’s eyes. “My senses had kicked in after six – by the time the Chopec showed up I was half out of my mind.” Then he did glance up at Blair, just for a second, and the tears that Blair had thought he’d seen were slipping gently down Jim’s face unnoticed as Jim became lost in the memories. “You’ve no idea what it was like, chief. There was so much noise, and I could hear everything; leaves rustling, spiders and beetles scurrying across the ground, water rushing in rivers that were miles away. One minute I could see the individual grains of earth beneath my feet, the next I’d be completely blind, and I had no idea what was happening to me.”

Suddenly restless, Jim stood abruptly, his chair squeaking loudly in the silence as he pushed it back and crossed over to the darkened window, staring out sightlessly at the city below. “I’d spent the first two days after the crash burying the rest of my unit, and every time I closed my eyes I could still see their bodies in the wreckage of the chopper, could still smell the blood and the burnt flesh.”

“Jesus, Jim,” At that Blair stood and moved quickly over to his friend’s side, placing a hand on Jim’s arm in quiet support. More than once he’d seen Jim struggling with his senses in Cascade – after an unexpected noise overloaded his hearing, or a sudden flash of light blew out his sight, but at least then he’d known what was happening, and there had been someone – Blair himself, or Simon, to help keep him safe until the sensory spike passed. Out there in the jungle Jim would have had no-one, and would have been easy prey for anything – human or animal – that happened along.

Jim allowed the touch, leaning slightly towards Blair for a moment before resting his forehead wearily against the cold glass. “As it turned out, the Chopec had been watching me for days, trying to work out who I was and what I was doing in their territory. By the time they decided I wasn’t a threat and showed themselves, I barely remembered my own name.”

Blair wanted to stop Jim, to tell him that he didn’t have to talk about this, anything to stop the raw pain that he could hear in his friend’s voice and see in his eyes, but in spite of that he kept silent. In the two years he’d known Jim, they had never spoken about his time in Peru, and Blair suspected that with the exception of the compulsory debriefing when he’d been rescued, he’d never told anyone exactly what had happened to him during those early days in the jungle. It was a story that needed to be told, for Jim’s sake as much as anything.

“I still don’t remember all that much about it,” Jim continued, oblivious to Blair’s anxious glances as he spoke, “I remember hearing footsteps, but they sounded like they were coming from all around me and the noise was hammering into my head, and my skin was crawling and suddenly these tribesmen started appearing from the trees. I still had my gun, but as I said, I was almost out of my mind with pain and I think I thought I was hallucinating. Somewhere along the line I lost the gun, and I thought they were going to kill me. Deep down, I think I hoped they would…” he trailed off then, eyes closed and Blair watched as a muscle jumped in his jaw, breaking the expressionless mask that had settled across Jim’s face as he spoke. 

“Anyway, the Chopec surrounded me, and Incacha, he…he knelt down beside me and took my face in his hands and it all just…stopped. I could see again, and there was this amazing silence, with a gentle, quiet breeze rustling through my hair, like I was back in Cascade, taking a stroll through the woods or something. He made the world sane again.”

Jim looked up at Blair again, then, and a soft smile graced his features for a moment as he reached up to Blair’s face and brushed away tears that Blair hadn’t even realised were falling.

“There was this incredible feeling of relief, and I stared up at him like I was seeing an angel. He helped me to my feet, and then smiled, turned and walked away. He didn’t even need to beckon me, chief – I would have followed him anywhere.”

Listening to Jim’s soft words, Blair finally began to understand just what Incacha had meant to the sentinel, just what Jim had lost. “I’m so sorry, Jim,” he said, tightening his grip on Jim’s arm helplessly. “I don’t know what else to say.”

“Incacha taught me how to control my senses. He gave me my Chopec name and showed me what was expected of me within the tribe. He was this amazing Shaman, I used to watch him teaching the children all about the spirits, and arranging vision quests for them as they got old enough. The whole tribe looked up to him.”

“Incacha taught you about the mystical side of being a sentinel?” Blair asked softly.

Sounding more composed now, Jim turned and leaned against the window, crossing his arms in front of him before answering Blair’s question. “Actually, no, he didn’t.” The surprise must have showed on Blair’s face, because he chuckled slightly before continuing, “I used to hear him talking to the others about their spirit guides, but whenever I asked him about anything mystical, he’d just laugh and tell me I wasn’t ready, that it wasn’t yet time for me to learn.”

“What did he mean by that?”

“I don’t know. He used to talk in riddles, and the only thing I could ever get him to say was that I’d learn about the animal spirits when the time was right, that one day something would happen to force me to turn to them.”

“Force you?” Blair frowned, not all that sure he liked the sound of what Jim was saying.

Jim simply shrugged. “He always sounded so solemn when he said that, as if he was warning me that something bad was going to happen. I guess that’s why I’ve never really wanted to think about what it means when I see the panther – it makes me uneasy, because of what Incacha said.”

Blair could see the way Jim’s shoulders were tensing up even talking about it, and so he changed the subject, moving back to the table and taking his seat once more, hoping that the break in conversation as Jim followed him and sat in the opposite chair would give Jim (and himself, if he was being brutally honest), a chance to gather himself again. Then, taking a deep breath, Blair asked the question he’d thought about earlier.

“Upstairs when you were asleep – you called out Incacha’s name. Were you dreaming about him?”

Jim glanced up at him sharply, and the silence settled between them for a moment before he sighed. “I don’t know,” he began hesitantly. “It’s a recurring dream. I’ve had it before, but I can never remember much about the dream itself. I see Simon getting shot, and a red-haired woman, a stranger…and you’re there, Incacha too…and there are flashes of something…images…” he trailed off, frowning as he shook his head. “When I first wake up from the dream I can always remember everything, but it’s fading. It always does.”

“How long have you been having the dream?”

Jim absently stirred his own drink, breaking their gaze to stare down at the table, his expression troubled. “On and off for years now. Ever since I was with the Chopec. It doesn’t happen often, though.”

Blair frowned, struggling to understand what Jim was saying. “Wait a minute. You’ve been having this dream for the last seven years? And it’s always the same?”

“I’m not sure. I think so, but I don’t remember much about it except for those first few images with Simon. When I first wake up, when I can remember it all, it seems like the same dream, but it fades so quickly I guess I can’t be absolutely sure. Why?”

A chill ran up Blair’s spine and he straightened up in his chair, wrapping both hands around his cup again in the hope that the heat from the drink would help to ward off suddenly icy fingers. There was no heat at all – the tea had long since gone cold. “Jim, you’ve been having a dream about me and Simon for the last eight years – you haven’t known us that long. When you were in the jungle, we’d never met.”

Jim stared at him in dawning horror, eyes widening as both he and Blair realised the implications of what he was saying. “How…how is that possible?” Jim asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Blair whispered, mind whirling in an attempt to find some kind of plausible answer. He fell back on his studies, needing the reassurance of things that he understood, that could be catalogued and quantified. These were things that made sense to him, that he always found comforting, for all his alternative upbringing and his belief in meditation and karma. “Parapsychologists would put it down to some form of extra-sensory-perception, if you’re particularly sensitive to your surroundings, which as a sentinel you would be. Like seeing the future or something.”

“Are you saying that Simon is going to get shot?” 

Blair shuddered. “I don’t know, man. But you’d seen my face before we ever met, Simon’s too. There’s certainly something going on here. I guess we’ll have to keep an eye out for this red-head that you’ve seen as well.” Then he grinned, “Of course, with your track record on redheads…” Jim smiled, a pale shadow of his usual grin, but Blair felt his spirits lift anyway. Considering their current conversation, it was better than nothing and probably more than he’d expected. Then something else occurred to him. “Hey, did you ever ask Incacha about the dreams?”

“Yeah. I described the dreams to him, but he was as cryptic as ever. He’d say that the dreams were my spirit trying to tell me something, but that knowledge had to come from understanding, that he couldn’t just tell me what they meant. I had to face the darkness with the light, whatever the hell that means. That when it was time to face the darkness, I would be ready.”

Blair shook his head helplessly, pushing his cup away from him, suddenly restless. “That sounds like he did know what they meant. But then he was a shaman – who knows what he saw on his vision quests.”

Blair stood then, gathering up both mugs and rinsing them out before making coffee for them both. It wasn’t long before the comforting aroma of coffee grounds began to permeate the loft, settling his own nerves and somehow making the whole conversation slightly less surreal – grounding him somehow. Absently stirring the hot liquid, he glanced up to find Jim leaning against the counter, arms folded, watching him. It wasn’t until Blair looked up that Jim spoke.

“It always seemed like Incacha knew what was going to happen. He’d commune with the spirits and tell the tribe where to hunt, or what weather we’d have to prepare for, how to handle it if the tribe was struck with an illness. Somehow he always knew, and he was always prepared.” 

Blair nodded, picking up both mugs and handing one to Jim, not quite able to stifle the comment that Incacha must have missed the warnings of his own death. He cringed even as he said the words, all too aware of just how petulant and harsh they were considering Incacha hadn’t even been dead for twelve hours. And yet part of him was angry, and unjustifiably so. He had no doubt that it was Incacha’s decision for the Chopec warriors to come to Cascade after Cyclops Oil, and it was that decision which had ultimately led to Janet’s death, and Incacha’s, and had put both he and Jim through hell over the last few days.

He expected Jim to shout, to be angry, to somehow react to his words, but Jim simply stood there, silent for a moment, before speaking quietly. “He knew.”

“What?”

Jim nodded, more to himself than to Blair. “Incacha knew how to find Cyclops Oil and Bud Torin, he knew how to find me, even though there was no way he should have known that I even lived in Cascade – there’s no way he would have missed something like that. When Incacha came to Cascade, he knew he wouldn’t be going home. Do you believe in fate, chief?”

“Fate?” Blair repeated, surprised by the question.

“Yeah. The idea that all of this is destined somehow.” 

“I’m not sure,” he replied, taking a sip of his coffee as he thought about Jim’s question. “I believe that some things happen for a reason, that they’re meant to be, I guess, but I’ve never been comfortable with the idea that we have no choice in the things we do, that we have no control over our own lives.”

“Incacha believed in fate. He used to say that the spirits guided their lives, protected the tribe and spoke to him to ensure that the Chopec survived, no matter what. That whatever happened was the will of the spirits.”

“That’s part of his cultural heritage as a shaman,” Blair added. “A lot of indigenous tribes believe that their destiny is controlled by someone else, whether they were called gods or spirits. They’d believe that if things were going wrong for the tribe, it was because they’d angered the gods somehow, and that if they could please them then things would get better again. It’s a belief that’s been lost in western society as we’ve begun to move away from religious icons. There are still dominant religions, but on the whole we don’t worship the way we used to.” 

Jim nodded. “But then if I really have been dreaming about you years before we ever met, that has to mean something.” He spoke hesitantly, sounding almost uncertain about his words, and yet Blair took comfort from them, smiling as the coffee began to ward off the chill that had settled over them both with the early morning frost.

“What will the Chopec do without a shaman?” he asked, not quite able to curb his curiosity about the far-away tribe.

“Incacha will have trained someone to take his place when the time came. Maybe Inea, he and Incacha were always close. They used to spend hours together. The tribe will be okay.”

“What about you?” Blair continued quietly, not sure whether his questions were beginning to enter dangerous ground.

“Me?” Jim paused, running one hand round the back of his neck as if to try and rub away a sore spot before speaking. “I’ll miss him,” he said simply. “I hadn’t seen him in years, but I’d never forgotten him. He saved my life in the jungle – I can’t ever repay that. I wish that I could have done something to save him, but he must have known what was going to happen before he came to Cascade, I guess I just have to trust that this was his time, and that he knew that, and he was ready.”

Blair was stunned, staring at Jim as if he’d never seen him before. Never had he thought he’d be having a conversation about fate and destiny with his ever-practical friend, and yet Jim always had this habit of surprising him, just when Blair thought he had the man completely figured out. Jim was speaking softly, appearing completely calm, his whole demeanour totally different to the grieving, out-of-control black ops ranger who had woken from the nightmare to blindly attack whatever threat he could sense. Now he seemed completely at ease, his voice carrying a relaxed tone to it that Blair had rarely heard before, and usually only after he’d managed to talk Jim into meditating with him, something Jim only ever did reluctantly even when both men knew he desperately needed it to deal with the stresses of looking after a tribe as large and complex as Cascade.

“What about your senses?” Blair asked, and was surprised to see the confusion that immediately appeared on Jim’s face.

“What about them?”

“He was your shaman, Jim,” Blair continued as if that explained everything.

Jim took a step closer to Blair, eyes narrowing in thought as if he was trying to puzzle out a Rubik’s Cube. “Yes, he was. He was a great man, and I’ll miss him, but now that my senses are back, his death won’t change them.” The he smiled fondly. “He passed the way of the shaman to you, remember?”

Blair couldn’t quite suppress the shudder that ran through him, and even in the semi-darkness of the moonlit loft, he knew that Jim would have seen it. “I’m not a shaman, Jim. I know a little about it from things I’ve read but I don’t have the slightest clue what’s really involved,” his voice began to rise in pitch as he spoke. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin!”

To Blair’s surprise Jim laughed. A flare of hot anger flooded through Blair, and he was about to ask exactly what Jim thought was so amusing when Jim spoke gently, beating him to it.

“Blair, Incacha saved my life in the jungle. There’s no way I would have survived if it wasn’t for him, but that’s all he taught me. Survival. You’re the one who taught me *who* I was, *what* I was. I’d never even heard of the term sentinel, or anything even remotely like it, until I came to see you at your office that first time.”

Blair frowned mutely as Jim watched him, evidently waiting for him to say something even though Blair didn’t have the slightest idea what that something was supposed to be. In the end Jim sighed, putting his cup down on the table before speaking again. 

“Let me ask you something. Everything you’ve taught me about controlling my senses over the last few years – the dials, piggybacking one sense onto another, working out what I’m allergic to – where did that all come from? Burton’s monograph?”

“Well - no,” Blair began slowly, still not really sure where Jim was going with this. “Burton’s diaries detail the sentinel’s role in the tribe, what he does, why, and talks about what the senses are used for, but there’s not that much detail about how they’re used.”

“Right,” Jim said quickly, cutting in before Blair could say anything else. “So if it wasn’t from Burton, how did you come up with using dials to turn my senses up and down?”

“Well, I kind of cobbled it together based on different theories I’ve researched over the years. There have been studies done that link the different human senses together, suggesting biological connections between, for example, sight and sound, which would suggest that grounding yourself with one would stop the other sense from overloading and causing you to zone.” Blair again found himself falling back on the reassuring familiarity of science, gesturing with his hands as he moved almost instinctively back into lecture mode. “Of course,” he added with a grin, “all the meditation techniques I learnt in years travelling with Naomi help. Studies have proved that regular meditation lowers stress levels and increases a person’s autonomic control over their own body, which can only help when you’re trying to control your senses.”

He stopped then, and glanced up at Jim to notice the gentle smile on his friend’s face. Blair felt his own face flush in response, strangely embarrassed even though he couldn’t quite put his finger on exactly why.

“What?” he asked.

“For an academic, chief,” Jim said gently, obviously fighting to keep a grin from his face, “you can be incredibly clueless sometimes.” Blair frowned, then, not really sure whether he should be feeling insulted, before Jim continued: “The first day we met, you told me that a tribal sentinel needed a partner, someone to watch his back, right?” Blair nodded. “So tell me more about him. What exactly was his role in all this?”

“Well, he’d pull the sentinel out of zones, help him hone his senses…where are you going with this, Jim?”

“And you don’t think you’ve had the training to be a shaman?”

“Right!” Blair said, rapidly getting the feeling that he was losing control of the entire conversation. “A shaman trains for years, going on vision quests and spirit walks – Incacha must have been in training since he was a child. I’ve never done anything like that!”

“And yet you’re the one who’s been here the last two years,” Jim cut in, raising his voice to get Blair’s attention. “Until yesterday I hadn’t seen Incacha for almost seven years. He didn’t teach me to be a sentinel, Blair, he taught me to survive. You’re the one who told me what I was that day at the university – I’d never even heard of a sentinel before then. You taught me how to use my senses, you’ve stood by me through all the crap that’s happened over the last few years. You might call it something else, but Incacha did nothing for me in the jungle that you haven’t.”

Blair was silent, staring at Jim as if he had just grown a second head. He was desperately touched by Jim’s words, at the unexpected confirmation that Jim valued Blair’s contribution to all this more than Blair had realised.

The whole conversation was completely surreal. For all Jim’s tough demeanor, Blair had learned very early on in their friendship that he was capable of great depth of feeling, a caring for those few Jim let close that he jealously guarded, having been burned once too often in the course of his childhood and the difficult careers he had chosen. Instead, Jim showed his feelings with his actions, and it was rare for him to actually give voice to them.

It was a testament to just how affected Jim had been by Incacha’s death that he seemed content to sit in the moonlit loft at 3am, openly discussing his nightmares, Incacha and his senses in quick succession when ordinarily it would have been like pulling teeth to get him to even broach the subject at all. In that moment, Blair knew that Jim’s recurring nightmare had upset him more than he was prepared to admit.

Unfortunately, Blair also had a feeling that in his grief, Jim had missed one very important aspect of their friendship – the dissertation. He smiled wearily at Jim then, realising when Jim’s own face fell slightly that the smile had been tinged with his own fears.

“Jim, I can’t be your shaman,” he repeated softly, briefly closing his eyes in sadness when Jim’s eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion.

“Why not?”

“My dissertation,” Blair explained, his gaze fixed firmly on the table between them. “The results are only usable if they’re objective. I’m supposed to keep detached from my subject. I’ve all but destroyed my scientific objectivity as it is – if I became your shaman all my research would be worthless.”

He was expecting Jim to get angry, to accuse him of only seeing Jim as a labrat or something, and so his eyes flew open to meet Jim’s gaze in shock when Jim simply laughed.

“What’s so funny?” he demanded.

“If that’s the case, I’d say you gave up any hope of maintaining your objectivity the minute you pushed Kincaid out of that helicopter,” he remarked wryly.

“My objectivity won’t be worth a damn if I’m dead, Jim,” Blair muttered sharply. “I’ll do what I have to do to keep myself, and you, safe.”

“And you’ll help me control my senses?” Jim asked.

“Of course! That’s what I’ve been doing all along!”

Jim nodded, his expression deceptively calm as he stood and walked around the table to stand at Blair’s side, looking down at his friend. “Sounds like a shaman to me,” he said, immediately holding up a hand to silence Blair’s response. “When Incacha asked me if you were my spiritual guide, and you told him that we learn from each other, he laughed at you, remember? Now I don’t know whether this is all fated, if the fact that you were in my dreams for years before we ever met means something or not, but I do know this. Incacha wasn’t a stupid man, he knew who you were and what was going to happen to him long before he left Peru – I’d say he had you pegged from the first moment he saw you.”

“I don’t know, Jim,” Blair said uneasily.

“Look, I’m only going to say this once, and then I’m going to bed. We’ve both got to be up in a couple of hours,” Jim interrupted with a trace of irritation in his voice that Blair found strangely comforting under the circumstances. “Incacha wouldn’t have passed the way of the shaman to you if he didn’t think you were ready, and there’s no-one I’d trust more with his legacy than you – as far as I’m concerned you’ve been doing it all along. But Sandburg, you’re the one who has to be comfortable with all this, not me. I can’t escape my senses, I think the last few days have proved that once and for all, but you still have a choice. You can walk away from all this if you really want to, it’s your decision.” 

Jim leaned down to Blair, putting both hands flat on the table. “But while you’re making your mind up, here’s something for you to think about. With everything that’s happened over the past two years, everything you’ve seen and done while riding with me, all the expeditions you’ve turned down to stay working at the PD – can you honestly tell me that you have any real objectivity left at all?”

With that he walked away, climbing the stairs to his bed without looking back.

Blair didn’t move, staying at the table with his mind in a whirl as he stared up at the top of the staircase. Was Jim right? Had Incacha seen something within him that Blair himself had missed by being so focused on the sentinel to the exclusion of his own role? And if so, was this the point where he had to make the same conscious choice that Jim had been faced with in Peru while searching for Simon and Daryl?

Blair had certainly been amazed at how often his cobbled together suggestions on how to deal with Jim’s senses had actually worked. Perhaps Jim was right and there was some kind of instinct at work.

He knew that whether Jim was right or not, he had an awful lot of thinking to do, a lot of soul searching, and as he sat in the semi-darkness, Blair couldn’t help but shake the eerie sense that this decision was vitally important, that he was standing at some kind of crossroads, faced with a choice that would ultimately effect the rest of his life. 

Jim’s words echoed back at him, and beneath it all he could hear his own voice, joking with Jim that Incacha’s bequest made him the shaman of the great city, and he recalled the feeling that he’d had, even then, that there was more to the phrase than simply a weak joke made to try and lighten a tragic situation.

‘Can you honestly tell me that you have any real objectivity left at all?’

He thought back over the rollercoaster of the last two years; the unexpected friendship he’d found that was closer than anything he’d ever known; the terror or Lash; getting shot; turning down Borneo; the Golden; risking his life time and again in order to stay at Jim’s side, and he couldn’t help the smile that appeared almost of its own volition.

Wasn’t Jim right? Hadn’t he, in fact, made his choice the moment he’d given up the expedition of a lifetime with Doctor Stoddard to stay with Jim, the very first time he’d picked up a gun to protect his friend?

Yes. Blair had made his choice a long time ago, and as he sat in the darkness, Blair had the strangest feeling that, somewhere in the distance, he could hear a wolf howl.


End file.
